Best speakers for classical, flamenco, acoustic string guitar music?

[RGA]

You mean like that "WALL O-SPEAKERS" that my three local B&W and Dynaudio dealers use? I didn't know that those speakers banged my butt with overbloated bass and extremely bright though innacurate [sp] treble. Heaven forbid if those "WALL O-SPEAKERS" dealers also carried JBLs.

I'm sorry should have said competant high end dealer...one that would set up a room with one set of speakers not having 14 speakers set up beside each-other with some sort of speaker selecting switch box. High end dealers don't do that. Dealers that carry high end equipment MIGHT but there is a difference in dealers. None here do that to my knowledge and I pretty much know all the dealers in the Vancouver met area.

Your generalization doesn't really hold up when compared to what listening test subjects identify as the characteristics that form their speaker preferences: linear midrange response, wide dispersion, and freedom from distortion. Furthermore, if all that speaker designers were after was to design speakers that stood out, they would just bump up their efficiency, since it's the loudness more than anything that loads the dice in favor of one speaker model over another. If speakers were sold on your so-called "WALL O-SPEAKERS" philosophy, then all speakers out there would use horn drivers.

Sensitivity is at play but simply doing that can make a speaker sound honky too...which is probably why a lot of Horns fell out of favour...you run the risk of hearing too much treble and not enough bass response. Most set-ups are in bad rooms in surround sound set-ups running with receivers with a DSP mode of some sort on. Knowing the way most of it is sold the dealers in most of these places would be foolish to set all knobs to flat in 2 channel as then you'd actually hear the two speakers normally.

What happened to your "WALL O-SPEAKERS" argument? I thought that speakers were designed to bang your butt, and now you're telling me that accuracy in a speaker is easy to find? Accurate is a VERY relative term, since no one speaker out there is anywhere close to completely accurate throughout the frequency range. All speakers make compromises, and those compromises that are closest to our own preferences are the ones that we subjectively regard as accurate or "good" sounding. There is no universal definition of accuracy as you seem to feel there is, that is unless your personal definition is authoritative, which of course it is not.

There is more and less accurate...my goal is not the pursuit of perfect accuracy since it's impossible. The Wall o Speakers speakers are not accurate or usually even good. See Skeptic's points above. Again no high end dealer that is competant would set them up this way...It's not my fault that you don't shop at such places.

The flaw to the argument that your long quoted piece espouses is that they seem to feel that it is possible to do a reference comparison by comparing a disc reproduction with a live instrument. Without knowing anything about the original recording, the original instruments, the acoustical environment, the miking technique, the processing involved, etc. you're doing nothing but guessing how the recording is "supposed" to sound.

Actually they were not saying to compare discs to live...quite the opposite actually. They make a note as to the recording being the unknown element so searching for accuracy is next to impossible. That said if you have a large sample of recordings as the co-writer of that piece does at over 35,000 LPs and buckets of the other formats the speaker that can highlight the differences from LP to LP CD to CD is probably giving you more insight that the system is serving a better window to the source than a speaker, amp etc that seems to make a lot of stuff sound the same.

I have instrumental discs where on some speakers the guitar is left center and on other speakers it's dead center. We presume the first is wrong because an instrumental solo is usually center...yet the second speaker that produced it left of center on another disc the solo is dead center. The first speaker had em both center which may indicate a deliberate movement to the middle...it's nice but it clearly got one recording wrong. That's soundstaging but tonal accuracy is my concern.

There are plenty of speakers that are only good at one thing, so how's that BS? The vintage JBLs had a signature sound that was very agreeable with classic rock. It was no coincidence that the JBL L100 and their studio monitors were frequently used to master those recordings. When I whip out my old AC/DC or Who albums on my parents' L65s, it sounds like those recordings were born to be heard on those types of speakers. But, try throwing a Miles Davis LP or just about any recent digital recording on those speakers, and it's good night now. Same thing with the older B&Ws. Wonderful and rich sound with acoustic music, but throw on a Led Zep LP and they sound anemic.

It's nice to have versatile speakers, but there's no magic bullet to suggest that there is a one-size-fits-all solution out there, especially if you're at all price conscious. To me, the BS is when someone says that they got a pair of speakers that makes everything played through there sound great.

Yes some speakers can do rock music well in that it can sound pleasing because a thin recording of the beatles cd may be enhanced if you have a tubby bass performer to give a nice fat sound where as on another speaker it may sound thin and shrill. It is about preference of course. And all speakers make compromises. It is not BS however to get a speaker that can do both rock and classical music to a very high level(maybe you need to hear one)...the ones that can are high end speakers IMO. Price isn't even the issue because many expensive ones(and I say expensive in the MEGA price range too) can't and many not so exhorbitant ones can. This does not mean they may not have frequency response irregularities or other weaknesses but they are likely in areas less noticed by the human ear.

Sounding GREAT with Led Zep or AC/DC and also with Vivaldi and Miles Davis from Speaker is possible and it didn't cost me much to attain it in the big schema of audio pricing. Under 3kCdn albeit some pieces used. This is not to say that someone would not prefer to listen to AC/DC for the pure impact on another set of speakers like Cerwin Vega if they're having a party. Or if you're listening to Izhak Perlman's violin works you may want Quad. Now flipping those discs to the other speakers with Perlman on the Cerwin Vegas the sound will probably be dreadful and the Quad will probably make a mess of the AC/DC. Interestingly the Quad stat at 7-8k will be considered high end while the Cerwin is considered low end junk. Well not to the AC/DC crowd it's not perhaps.

Playing AC/DC subjectively through the AN E Sec will be highly enjoyable though won't have the last bit of belt a lower end Cerwin has...and it will play Symphonic works with huge scale and impact but not the last bit of holographics that the Quad exhibits perhaps. The Difference is the AN E doesn't completely turn to Shi! if you don't give it the specific recording to make it sound good. And since the owner is comfortable playing any disc through his speaers for repoters reviewers testers customers and anyone else...that tells me more that at least he's not afraid any genre - or even of lesser recordings.

All speakers have compromises...I like the speakers that don't continuously remind me of them however...there are a lot fewer ones out there than I first realized - and MORE money can help but not always.